


Sharpen the Knife

by Qpenguin98



Series: Better to love than to have and to hold [5]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Amnesty, Clairvoyance, Hurt/Comfort, I suppose?, M/M, Making Up, Past Relationship(s), TAZ Amnesty, listen i just wanted this, now adjusted with mama's canon name!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-10
Packaged: 2019-09-15 17:53:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16937937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Qpenguin98/pseuds/Qpenguin98
Summary: "There’s a very sure future playing in his mind right now, the outcomes of which are uncertain, but he does know how it’ll start. Barclay is on his way, or he will be, and he wants to talk. Talk, as if Indrid hasn’t been avoiding this exact situation for over ten years."An overdue conversation and what can maybe be called a happy ending.





	Sharpen the Knife

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all, theres a lot of context for this fic in this other one i wrote, so here is that!  
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/15960197

Indrid Cold has had a fairly terrible day. Between with being seen by that one kid, Keith he thinks, and having to deal with looking forward to see whether or not Aubrey would actually be able to take care of it, and then getting his head bashed in by a semi murderous goatman, and then getting drug through the cold, so very cold snow and chained up with even colder chains to the tree that could, in fact, kill everyone in Kepler with the biggest sinkhole he’s ever seen, it’s been a fairly god awful day.

He’s home now and trying desperately to warm up. He’d snatched his glasses from the ground before flying away and he’s got them on now, buried under sweaters and blankets. There’s a bandage on his head under the hat he has on. As reluctant as he is to take care of himself he’d rather not get blood places it isn’t. He needs to take care of the spot on the wall and the floor by the drawings, but that’s for later. Now he needs to warm up. It feels like he’ll never get warm. His hands are shaking and his teeth are chattering and his whole body shakes with the chill even curled around the space heater like he is.

Looking forward with uncertainty, he finds Duck and Leo Tarkesian, the grocery store man, talking about something beyond him, that he’d rather not get into at his moment. Aubrey finds herself speaking to Maddy, Mama, whatever she’s going by now, about Sylvain and the Interpreter and the monsters inside of Thacker, which is something he didn’t see coming, but he’s glad it’s happening. Ned is panicking about something in the near future, lost goods, a note that can only mean bad news, and Indrid sighs. He supposes they’ll all have to deal with the aftermath of tonight.

And for him…

There’s a very sure future playing in his mind right now, the outcomes of which are uncertain, but he does now how it’ll start. Barclay is on his way, or he will be, and he wants to talk.  _Talk_ , as if Indrid hasn’t been avoiding this exact situation for over ten years. It’s been so long, too long, but Indrid doesn’t see things ending too badly in most futures. In some of them it gets nasty, but in most they end amicably.

He should clean, but his head pounds as he tries to stand, and his body tenses with cold, and he sinks back around the heater, dropping his head.

Just a moment more, he thinks. He’ll make himself get up, make himself dump old eggnog in the sink and clean up the blood on the floor. Straighten the papers that had fallen and throw the wrong ones away.

He hadn’t seen the goatman doing that, hadn’t expected to get his head slammed against the wall in the middle of a vision, but it’s fine now. The day is fine.

He’s fine.

He stands, pulling the blanket tighter around himself, and he starts collecting dishes. Cups in the sink, plates on the counter, silverware also in the sink, a squirt of soap in the chrome, hot water on and heating. As the sink fills up he grabs a dishrag and dunks it in the soapy water. The heat stings his hands but he feels genuinely warm for the first time in hours, so he lets them stay there a moment longer. Then he goes and wipes at the floor, cleaning the tacky but not quite dry blood off with the washcloth. Next is the wall, a little harder that the hardwood floor. It smears and a stain is left, but deeper cleaning can be left for later. The actual physical blood is gone and that’s what matters. He grabs some ruined drawings off the wall. Most of them ended up wrong anyway, and the others are low on the probability scale. If they become important again he can always redraw them.

The sink is done, almost overflowing, and he shuts the water off. He throws the bloody rag in the corner of his counter to deal with later and grabs a new washcloth, dunking his hands on the water and starting the cleaning process.

It doesn’t take as long as he thought it would, and whether it be the head injury or the monotonousness of the task, it feels like he loses time, going over scenario after scenario and trying to see which one will pan out best.

He curls back around the space heater when he’s done, waiting, warming. Indrid honestly wants this conversation to be over with, wants it to end before it even begins so he can go to sleep and warm up that way.

The knock almost startles him, but he rises, opening the door.

Barclay stands there, just as unbundled as he always is in the cold weather. Indrid shivers from the chill and steps aside to let him in. He enters, awkwardly, and shucks his coat, holding it stiffly in his hands until Indrid takes it from him and hangs it on the back of a chair.

“Sit,” he says, dragging a heater over to a chair and sitting in it. As long as they’ve known each other, there’s probably some manners to be had that don’t involve hunching up on the floor to get warm. Barclay sits on the couch, body tense.

“I didn’t realize you… I didn’t think you actually stayed.”

Ah, it starts this way. “Couldn’t leave you to fend completely for yourself, now could I?”

“I thought you didn’t want to be so close when we died,” Barclay says flatly, and it isn’t a question in any way. Indrid remembers those words too, thought they’d be the last ones he’d say to him, and yet here they are.

“I meant emotionally, but I get your point.” It’s uncomfortable, this conversation is. He understands that it’s needed, but why did it have to happen on this god awful shitty excuse for a day?

“I thought you’d left West Virginia entirely, if I’m being honest. Get away from all your ‘fuck ups,’ as you liked to call them.”

“I did, for a little while,” he says, and it’s true. “Do you want what’ll make you happy or the truth?”

“What do you think, Indrid?” And he doesn’t sound pleased or mad or sad, he just sounds tired. Indrid wonders how this night was for him. “The  **truth**.”

“Well, the nice answer was going to be that I missed you all too much and that’s partly true.” He doesn’t know why he even prefaced it like this. God his head feels fucked. “The, uh, the true answer is that being away made me sick. Not, like, literally, I still have this rock after all.” He thumbs the stone around his neck. “But not knowing was too much. I had no idea if you were okay or if Maddy was okay or what was happening to this town and I… it was too much.”

Barclay doesn’t say anything and he knew there’d be silence but he didn’t know it would feel like this, feel like having his insides wrenched from his body. He wants noise and a voice and maybe even yelling. Something. Any kind of emotion. Not this quiet dull look he has on his face.

“Did you ask the new guard not to tell me they were talking to you?” And that question is a shock. He looks at him, trying to see if it’s some kind of joke. It isn’t.

“No. No? Why would I do that? I know we haven’t… talked in a long time, but I never asked them not to tell you. Why? Have they been keeping secrets?”

“It’s not even that good of a secret, they’re all shit liars,” Barclay says, and it’s frustrated yet fond. “They’ve been sneaking off and getting strange phone calls these last couple days and it’s not been very well hidden what was happening. Hints of the future? Billy having a human disguise? It’s like they weren’t even trying.”

“Well that is unfortunate. There would’ve been no harm in telling you. I don’t know why they felt the need to keep it a secret, but it’s out now.”

Barclay’s brows furrow and he stares past Indrid at something behind him and—

“Is that blood?”

Ah. There it is. Indrid waves a hand and Barclay looks at him again.

“It’s no big deal. Something just came up earlier, that’s all. It’s fine now.” His head throbs as he says it, but he’s had practice at schooling his reactions to his hurts for a long time. “You don’t have to worry.”

“What happened?”

“Just, just hit my head is all. It’s fine.”

“You— what? How do you just hit your head so hard you start bleeding?”

“There may have been a murderous goatman involved in guiding my head into hitting the wall, but he’s very very dead now thanks to the Pine Guard.”

“You were involved in tonight’s hunt?” He sounds shocked and Indrid scoffs.

“Oh please, I was involved from the beginning. The future was changing rapidly and I couldn’t have that. Besides, I was only out at that tree for a little bit before they all came in and Duck messed up his sword freeing me. Barclay, really, it’s fine.”

He doesn’t look like he’s taking it well, he looks a little scared, a little worried, a little mad. “This is why you left in the first place, isn’t it? To get away from this kind of fighting?”

“That’s… no. Did you even hear me when I left?” He knows he said a lot of things but he was pretty certain he made himself clear. “I left because you and her didn’t care anymore what happened to yourselves and I watched you die too many times in my head. Do you know what it’s like to wake up next to someone you think is going to die in hours? Do you know what seeing you die was like?”

“You were just as bad,” Barclay says bitterly. “You we just as unhealthy as we were and you know it. You never took care of yourself, and it barely looks like you’re taking care of yourself now.”

“I’m not saying I did or I do,” he says, frustrated. “I’m saying— what the hell? We had this fight already! You’ve already heard everything I have to say, I don’t need to tell you again.”

“Because you’re so good at telling,” he says, rolling his eyes. “You never told anyone anything about yourself because you wanted to die so goddamn bad. And you yell at me about almost dying all those times. I didn’t. I haven’t. I don’t plan on it.”

“You can’t plan on it. You can’t plan on whether or not you’re going to die. It just happens. The future changed so quickly there, Barclay, anything could happen with the abominations. You could die at any second.”

“I’m not dead! You’re acting like I’ve died but I’m right here. I’m right here and you never actually left and I loved you! I loved you, Indrid, and it’s like you never even cared about that because you were too afraid of something that’s never happened.”

“Don’t tell me what I cared about,” he says lowly. “Don’t act like I didn’t try my fucking hardest to keep you alive or to make things work. I’m not going to sit here and listen to you berate me because you think you’re in the right here. No one’s in the right, that’s why we’re not together anymore.”

“We’re not together anymore because you didn’t want to deal with—”

“I miss you!” He says, standing. He sways on his feet a bit and Barclay instinctively reaches out a hand to steady him but he bats it away, steadying himself on the armchair. “I miss you so fucking much. I’ve missed you every day since I left but I couldn’t come back because I knew you wouldn’t change, and I knew I wouldn’t either, and we were never going to work stuck like that. I loved you. I love you. I love you and I miss you and I wish to every god that this could work but it can’t. Because you won’t ever stop throwing yourself in the way of monsters to protect the people you care about. And I can’t handle that.”

“You can’t—”

“I watched you die. Do you know what’s that like? To watch the person you love most in the world die? Over and over? It’s horrible. It’s the worst feeling in the world, looking into the future and seeing you… seeing you like that.”

Barclay crushed under wood. Barclay burnt alive. Barclay choking to death on his own blood. Barclay dragging himself broken limbed out of a cave only to stop just before the end. Barclay limply floating. Barclay staring back at him with empty eyes.

Barclay bleeding out with all the other residents of the Lodge in the massive sinkhole that could have been.

He’s knees give out under him and he stumbles. Barclay catches him by the arms and sets him on the floor before he has a chance to hurt himself any further. His hands burn on his shoulders and Indrid takes in a gasping breath of air.

“Indrid,” he says, and he sounds a little desperate.

“You have no idea,” he says with airless lungs. He can’t really breath. “You have no idea what that’s like.”

“ **Indrid** ,” he makes them say together, and one of Barclay’s hands comes up to cup his face. He leans into it instinctively, closing his eyes and trying hard to get himself under control. “ **Breathe** , you’ve got it,  **just breathe** , come  **on, I** know you know what  **I’m saying**.”

He shudders in a breath, and another, and another, and he’s probably breathing too fast but air is making it to his head and he doesn’t feel as dizzy anymore. Barclay stays down on the floor with him, hands pressed firmly against him, just like they used to. Just like before.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he has control of himself again. “I’m not usually around people when things like that happen anymore, and my head isn’t at its best right now. I… you don’t deserve to have to help me, especially with this topic.”

“You idiot,” he says, and it’s almost fond, almost like it used to be. “You think I’m just going to stop caring about you?”

“Might as well. Never did you much good.”

“It did me plenty of good. Stop it.” He swipes his thumb on his cheekbone and Indrid’s heart aches. “Just because we’re fighting, just because we’re split doesn’t mean I’ve stopped caring about you, Indrid. You’re not the only one who missed someone these years.”

“You acted like it was nothing,” he says quietly. “Like me watching you die wasn’t worth anything because it never  _really_  happened. You know how real things feel, Barclay. You just never wanted to deal with your own death. And it… god it hurts still. Seeing all the ways you could still die. How you could have tonight, how you might have in the past. One of these days it’ll be real and I won’t be able to stop it and I can’t feel that happen twice in one day. I can’t feel you die in my head and then watch it happen in real time. That’s why I left, but it didn’t fucking work very well.”

Barclay is quiet, thumb still stroking over his cheek, and Indrid knows it can’t be like it was before. They can’t go back to whatever it was they were. He pulls his head away from his hand reluctantly, shifts his body back so they’re not quite touching. Barclay looks at him with hurt eyes for a moment before they go blank.

“It’s not you,” he says, almost whispered. “We can’t go back and you know it.”

“I know,” Barclay says. “I know we can’t go back, but what does the future look like?”

He snorts out a laugh and drops his head. “You know it doesn’t work like that. I can’t just see if we swing back ‘round to romance again.”

“ **Do you even want that**?” Barclay’s face is emotionless, carefully guarded, and god Indrid wants to smash that look out of his face and see some real emotion again. He hates this. He  _hates_ this.

“I miss you,” he says, staring at the floor, staring at Barclay’s hands resting limply on his legs. “I love you so much and I’ve missed you for so long but I… right now isn’t the best time to jump into that.”

“You were never one for making responsible decisions,” Barclay says fondly. “What changed?”

“Time apart from everyone will do that to you,” he says, looking back up at him. “And I’m not saying I don’t want that. I think I want it so much it hurts me. But now isn’t the time. This is the first time we’ve talked in over ten years, Barclay. We can’t just ignore that. I can’t ignore that you’re so willing to die at the drop of a hat for the Lodge and you can’t ignore the fact that I still can’t take care of myself in any kind of healthy way.”

“You’re right.” Barclay sits back on his hands, breathing out lowly and staring up at the ceiling. “I wish you weren’t, but you always were so I guess it tracks that you still are.”

“I wasn’t always right.” Indrid’s voice is a little wobbly, his eyes are a little damp, and Barclay snaps his head down to look at him. “I miss you, I shouldn’t have left, I love you, and fuck.” He sniffles and wipes at his face. “Sorry. God I swear I’m not crying on purpose. Head injury.  _Shit_. I just. I wanted things to get better and I thought they would if I left but they didn’t. Nothing’s gotten better and all it did was make this stupid rift between us and I’ve  _missed you_ , I miss you so much and I try not to think about it but we knew each other for so ling. Years and decades of being together gone because I couldn’t handle our problems and I’m so fucking sorry. I just want us to talk again.”

Barclay scoots forward and offers his arms and Indrid drops his head on his shoulder, soaking up the warmth when he wraps his arms around him.

“Maybe we do that then. We talk. We’re talking now and it’s going pretty good. We talk and we become friends again and we don’t have to worry about the rest of it. We know each other too well not to talk. I’ve missed you too.” His voice is watery too and Indrid hiccups into his shirt. “God Indrid I’ve missed you so much. So has Maddy, so has everyone. But you meant everything to me and if I could get even a sliver of that back I would.

“Okay,” he whispers hoarsely. “Okay let’s just… let’s talk and get to know each other again.”

Barclay tells him years worth of things about himself, years of guarding the town and helping find the abandoned Sylphs and running the Lodge. Indrid tells him about traveling and coming back desperate to be able to See everyone again and holing himself in the trailer and finding a new love for egg nog.

It’s not okay but it’s better, he thinks. He can work with this. They can work at this.

That’s all they ever needed in the first place.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Lol hi! I was writing this, and then the new episode came out so i scrapped everything and rewrote it bc you know there was no way I was gonna leave out all that goodness about him being drug through the snow and chained up to the tree wiht his busted up head  
> i have a lot of feeling about indrid and barclay and god im so stoked for them to meet in canon, whenever that is.  
> if you liked it, please comment!


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